


Saving the world, one genius engineer at a time

by laireshi



Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Angst, M/M, Mindwipe, Not an Unhappy Ending, hickmanvengers, incursions, old steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 15:19:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8061535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laireshi/pseuds/laireshi
Summary: The world is ending. Everything dies.Steve sees Tony again and finds long lost hope. After all, who else but Tony could ever save him?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ranoutofrun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ranoutofrun/gifts).



> This is written for Cap-IM Tiny Bang, round 13: Marvel, with [wonderful art](http://capim-tinybang.tumblr.com/post/150208967424/cap-im-tiny-rb-round-13-marvel) by [Ranoutofrun](http://ranoutofrun.tumblr.com/). It's really great, go look!
> 
> Thanks to [MassiveSpaceWren](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MassiveSpaceWren/pseuds/MassiveSpaceWren) for looking over it!
> 
> Fill for the "Avengers, assemble" square on my bingo card.

At first, Steve’s not even sure _what_ he’s looking at. He stops in the doorway, curses his old body and bad eyesight and squints, trying to figure it out, because he certainly knows what he _thinks_ he’s seeing, except it’s impossible.

Tony is there, gaunt and bloody, in a translucent cage. Steve feels like breath was knocked out of him.

For months, he’d been sure Tony was hiding, plotting, _laughing at him_. Has he been here all these time? He’s thin and pale enough it’s obvious he hasn’t seen sun in a long time, and probably hasn’t eaten, either—and Steve knows about the new Extremis virus, knows Tony now can take so much more than a normal human, and yet . . .

 _Maybe it’s a trap_ , he thinks. It’d be like him, make Steve _care—_ he doesn’t he doesn’t he doesn’t, _he does—_ only to reveal the truth later and hurt him.

Tony doesn’t raise his head, as if he doesn’t have the strength to or just doesn’t care, but he speaks. “I’m pretty sure I don’t make a compelling image to look at right now, Steve, are you going to just stand there?”

“Stark,” Steve says.

“Oh, that’s right, I’m _Stark_ now. Are you gonna leave me here? Or are you gonna torture me too? I’m all yours,” Tony snarls. “The world is ending, but clearly I’m the biggest danger still.” His tone is biting.

The world _is_ ending. This is exactly why Tony is a danger now. This is why Steve cares. (It’s not.)

Steve walks to the glass cage, slowly. He doesn’t have his cane with him, and much as he’d like something to lean on, he’s grateful he left it at the helicarrier. Tony doesn’t need to see more weaknesses in him.

(Steve feels like a walking weakness, wrinkled and frail and exhausted every moment; but _the world is ending_ , there’s no time for rest. There’s no time to find a cure, if one exists; and probably the only person capable of doing it anyway is now looking at Steve from inside a cage, and Steve’s _not_ trusting him ever again.)

“We’re still here,” Steve says. “No thanks to you blowing another planet up.”

“No,” Tony agrees, bitter. “Thanks to the _Cabal_ doing just that.”

So he knows that. Interesting. But it doesn’t have to mean anything; it’s entirely possible he’d learnt about it before Steve did.

(But he hadn’t _learnt_ of the incursions before Steve. He only made him forget.)

There’s a sharp pain in Steve’s heart, but he knows this one at least has nothing to do with his age.

“I just wanted to die for something!” Tony roars, suddenly, punching the floor next to him. He looks up at Steve, finally, and his eyes are wild.

Steve has no idea who he’s looking at: the Tony that he thought—wrongly—that he knew, or the Tony created by Red Skull’s spell that Steve hadn’t known at all, and most of all, he has no idea if the two are really so different.

Tony keeps Steve’s gaze as he yells, “Let my pathetic existence have some fucking meaning!”

Steve snaps. “Like wiping my mind gave it to you?!”

“Exactly like that,” Tony cuts, and he no longer seems insane. “It was the best option I saw to _protect you_ , so yes, _exactly like that_.”

“You lied to me!” Steve screams. Distantly, he knows they’ve had this conversation before. But this time he can’t actually punch Tony in a futile attempt to make him hurt like Steve did. “You used me!”

“You are alive, so _it fucking worked_!”

“You can’t—”

“Why not, Steve, I’ve used your continuous survival to find _some meaning_ for years before this,” Tony spits, and then he stills, stares at Steve, but he doesn’t even seem to be breathing.

 _For years_ , and Steve remembers returning after the Superhero Civil War to see Tony’s prone form, and Tony himself letting _Steve_ decide whether to bring him back to life or not from an old video.

“Does it even matter,” Tony laughs darkly. “’Everything dies’,” he quotes.

Steve looks at him for a long while, and then switches on the holographic shield on his wrist and in one movement, smashes it into the glass wall.

It shatters, but Tony makes no move to cover himself, no move to stand up.

“You’re a liar,” Steve says, angry.

“Haven’t we agreed on that years ago,” Tony asks numbly.

“ _Everything dies_?” Steve asks. “That’s not Tony Stark.”

“Tony Stark is the worst thing that happened to you,” Tony mutters.

“Possibly,” Steve agrees. He doesn’t know if it’s true or not—and in a way it is, but only because Tony is (was) also _the best_ thing that happened to him. “But something else you are, for sure? _World’s best engineer_.”

“The universe itself told you, Steve—there’s no coming out of this one,” Tony says, but he stands up. His armour mends around him in a few moments, and Steve’s vaguely uneasy at the sight.

“I don’t trust her,” Steve says sharply, and then freezes.

Tony laughs. Of course he understood. Of course. “But you trust me?” he asks incredulously. “The man who lied to you for months?”

Steve bites on his lower lip hard enough he almost draws blood. “We’re not friends, Stark,” he says, and it hurts, but it’s nothing but the true. His . . . other emotions don’t matter. “But I need someone to fix the world.”

Tony looks at him. “And you’ll want the monster to do it?” he asks, quietly. “Better kill me now, Steve, before it’s too late.”

 _Finish it, Steve_ ; that Steve remembers intimately. This, here, he can already see in his new nightmares.

“If you are a monster,” Steve says, and he must be; who else would’ve done it to Steve while claiming to be his friend? Steve continues, “then a necessary one. You don’t get the easy way out of this one, Tony.”

Tony almost jolts, at the sound of his name, maybe.

Steve has never in his life wished for anything more than he wishes to just _hate_ Tony Stark. It’d make things so much easier.

“Do you know what I was doing before the first incursion that the Cabal saved us from?”

 _Fucking a redhead_ , Steve wants to say, or maybe _preparing bigger bombs, only you ran out of time_.

Tony is taller then Steve now, in his full armour, the armour that Steve hates because white circular lines are _nothing_ like Tony, and he steps to Steve close enough to touch. “I went to my house in the Hamptons, I poured more vodka shots than I could count—I can count anything—and then I put a repulsor to my face.” He’s tilting his head, like saying that doesn’t cost him anything, like he’s watching for Steve’s reactions.

And Steve’s terrified. Despite everything, despite himself, he’s terrified at the prospect of Tony turning to alcohol, because it always pretty much equalled to Tony trying to kill himself. And he did that too.

“And then the Cabal stopped the incursion,” Tony says. He stares at Steve intently now. “I’m not sure I’m what you need right now.”

Steve wants to punch him. “If you believed this was hopeless,” Steve says through clenched teeth, “you would’ve drunk those shots.”

“I might have,” Tony lies.

“We wouldn’t be here talking if you had.”

And for all the pain and the heartbreak, Steve is glad Tony’s there now. Because, even if Tony is all wrong, the situation is right: the world is ending, and Tony is here next to Steve.

“You will fix it,” Steve says. “Because that’s what you do.” Plain and simple.

Tony almost smiles. “I _am_ good,” he says. “And then what? Back to the cage?” He indicates it with a shrug.

Steve shakes his head slowly. “You fix the incursion. You save the world, Iron Man.” Steve can’t do it. He should stop pretending otherwise. He wants to punch something, but it’s true. “And then—and then we talk. No lies this time.”

“Well,” Tony drawls. “Sounds good. Congratulations on saving the world, Steve.”

“Stark,” Steve says, a warning.

“You let me out,” Tony explains, walking towards the exit from the cave. Steve’s pretty sure he wouldn’t really be able to make two steps out f the armour. “I’m looking forward to that talk,” Tony adds.

Steve doesn’t. But he’s not looking forward to working with Tony now, either, and he knows it’ll work. 

Maybe at some point they’ll save themselves.

He laughs, ugly and broken, and just says, “Good luck, Iron Man.”

Tony normally says _don’t need it_ , but he’s maybe out of earshot now. Steve follows out of the cave at a much slower pace.

Tony’s still outside. Steve stands next to him and looks at the sky.

For the first time in months, he lets himself believe it’s _not_ the end of the world. Not yet.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has also a [tumblr post](https://laireshi.tumblr.com/post/150566268327/saving-the-world-one-genius-engineer-at-a-time) and an [imzy post](https://www.imzy.com/laireshi/post/fic_saving_world_one_genius_engineer_at_time).
> 
> I've also written another fill for this art, a sadder one, that I posted on [tumblr](https://laireshi.tumblr.com/post/150587073517/hope) and on [imzy](https://www.imzy.com/laireshi/post/ficlet_hope).


End file.
